October 2020

What better treat for the chickens on Halloween than a pumpkin?! Plus I noticed a great-looking spiderweb between some of the pumpkins from our garden in the breezeway. 🕸🎃🐓

2020-10-31 · chickens · food · holiday

Uh oh… my AirPods Pro must have heard of Apple’s new service program, as the right earbud has just started crackling while in use. I thought I was one of the lucky few that didn’t have that issue. (Resetting didn’t help.)

2020-10-31 · technology

On the homestead blog: Spooooky Halloween Caturday to one and all! This week, we were visited by scary raccoon monsters, and the scariest of all creatures, a skunk. But fear not, much cuteness was also observed. #Caturday 🐈

2020-10-31 · cats · Caturday

Video: Listen to lots of hungry hummingbirds. Sound up! After refilling the hummingbird feeders, I stood nearby outside and recorded several of them arriving, with the lightsaber-like wing noises and twittering arguments. 📹🐦

2020-10-30 · birds · video

On the homestead blog: your weekly flock update. This week, I am highlighting 20 chicken-related pictures plus 12 duck pictures, along with a summary GIF of 59 candidates. #FlockFriday 🦆🐓

2020-10-30 · chickens · ducks · FlockFriday

One more for #NationalCatDay: I can’t neglect to mention our family of feral cats. Here are some pictures of inside their heated shelter and three cabins from last night. Learn more about them on my homestead feral cats page. 🐈

2020-10-29 · cats · NationalCatDay

Also for #NationalCatDay, our current pet cats Paladin and Pippin sharing the cat tower yesterday and today. Normally they don’t like to be that close to each other, except when there’s food involved. 🐈

2020-10-29 · cats · NationalCatDay

It’s #NationalCatDay and #ThrowbackThursday, so here are some pictures of our former cat Pixel from 2005, enjoying some leashed outside time (he grew up indoor/outdoor in NZ, then became indoor-only except when leashed when we moved to the US). 🐈

2020-10-29 · cats · david · NationalCatDay · ThrowbackThursday

The same pictures of ducks flapping wings in GIF form. 🦆

2020-10-28 · ducks · gif

A couple of pictures of ducks flapping wings on the edge of the lawn this morning. 🦆

2020-10-28 · ducks

The sub-freezing snap we’re having has confused the trees; here is a gingko tree that dropped most of its leaves before they had a chance to change from green. 🌱🌳❄️🍃🍂

2020-10-27 · trees

I have two quotes about voting in my collection, both from Robert A. Heinlein, unsurprisingly. The first is my favorite; here is the second, from To Sail Beyond the Sunset: 💬

2020-10-27 · quote

A perfect democracy, a 'warm body' democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens ... which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. If you’re in the US, vote. Make good choices, people.

Pippin, my evening lap warmer. 🐈

2020-10-26 · cats

A GIF edition of dripping icicles. ❄️

2020-10-26 · gif · ice

It’s still below freezing overnight, so unsurprisingly the waterers in the chicken runs are frozen, with some nice icicles. (Don’t worry, they have heated waterers inside the coops.) 🐓❄️

2020-10-26 · chickens · ice

dA 5Star iOS app 📱 #MediaMonday

2020-10-26 · MediaMonday

An iOS widget to show random 5-star reviews of apps or podcasts. A nice ego boost for developers. It’s fun to see one of the hundreds of nice things people have written about Dejal Time Out or my other apps.

On the homestead blog: Fall is a colorful time of year, especially from the various maple trees we have around the homestead. 🌱🌳🍁

2020-10-25 · trees

The temperatures has been below freezing over the past few days, so our feral cats have been hanging around home more, enjoying their heated shelters. Here is a time-lapse from the last few days of inside their main cat house. 📹🐈

2020-10-24 · cats · video

On the homestead blog: your weekly cat update, with a few pictures of snuggles, and several GIFs. #Caturday 🐈

2020-10-24 · cats · Caturday

Good morning Paladin. 🐈

2020-10-24 · cats

Actually, @jidabug has some pictures of Pippin as a kitten (back in those days, she was in charge of the cameras and photo library). Here are some pictures from October 2007. 🐈

2020-10-23 · cats · david · jenn